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Have you already pre-ordered your copy of Super Mario Odyssey? It’s not too late to pre-order to get that sweet Amazon discount.

This is going to be the first full open-world Mario game since Super Mario Sunshine was release on the Gamecube in 2002. Overall, the buzz seems to be pretty positive for the most part. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild blazed a path on the Nintendo Switch with the massive landscapes, story and world. So far it seems like Odyssey is up to the task, and just might be following that up with it’s own spin, and the charm we’ve come to love in modern Mario games.

After 15 years, a spectacular Mario open-world platformer is far overdue if you ask us. Most of that were kids when Sunshine came out are now adults with jobs, and real responsibilities, and dare I say it? Kids of our own! Though it’s not as grave as it seems. Bringing Mario into a whole new generation with a stellar game is exactly what Nintendo needs to do right now. Give something to the old fans like us, give something to the even older fans, and also bring something to engage the youngins.

It’s very interesting to see how deeply set Super Mario games are set in popular culture. As we saw with the massive success of the NES and SNES Classic, Nintendo and Mario are deeply rooted into the hearts and minds of many generations of gamer. It’s going to be interesting to see if the Switch and Odyssey are one of the things in 20 years time that people feel nostalgic about. Nostalgic enough to wait in long lines, and drop large amounts of cash on at the drop of a…red hat. I personally am very interested to see what sticks and what doesn’t in 20 years time. Will there ever be another NES or SNES that really captivates the hearts of players or is that a time long gone in an industry that moves so fast in can hardly keep up with the attention spans of its players? Can’t say for sure right now, but it will surely be interesting to see when the time comes.

Although I must say this new sleek design does appeal a lot to me. It practically looks like they slapped an iPhone to the top of this thing. They’ve done away with making it more “little kid friendly”. The first 2DS was built like a brick that could withstand a couple of late night tosses to the ground when things didn’t go your way, like when you you lost a character in Fire Emblem: Awakening.

If I were to run a poll right now on how many of you actually use the 3D functions of your 3DS, most of you would probably say “never use it”. The 2Ds was up for a new iteration since the original didn’t have the c-nibblet for enhanced control of your camera in games like Monster Hunter: Generations

I feel like this revision to the hardware is a last breath for the line of 3DS/2DS consoles. We have the Nintendo Switch going forward, so as to not eat their own tail Nintendo might want to make a few more quick bucks before bucking this aging system.

I will say this, the console market could keep this system going due to it being smaller than the Nintendo Switch, but I’m hoping for new innovation in the handheld space which I believe the Nintendo Switch provides at this point.

Who’s interested in buying the New Nintendo 2DS XL? Who bought the old one just recently and now regrets it? Let me know in the comments below!

Similar to Severed, Guacamelee blends Metroidvania gameplay with a unique art style that’s bound to leave you dazzled. The world of Severed is covered in colorful fungi, eyeballs, and trees that shift from indigo to bright neon purple.

As I mentioned, the animation style of Severed is definitely borrowed from studio predecessors. Unlike games like Guacamelee, though, you’ll find Severed to be full of demonic imagery and endless insanity.

In Severed, you follow a protagonist named Sasha. Sasha is a one-armed young girl turned warrior on a quest to unravel the mysteries of a dark fantasy universe. She’s also looking for her family, but finding them is no easy feat. Fortunately, you have a supremely powerful living sword by your side throughout the harrowing journey.

The story starts when Sasha is pushed into this insane world when you learn Sasha has lost her arm and her family along with it. A demon informs her that this world isn’t her reality, she’s a long way from home and if she’d ever like to return she must reunite the bodies of her slain family.

Severed is in the style of Legend of Grimrock or the Etrian Odyssey series, maps are laid out in grid format and Sasha must move through them one square at a time. The game is a first-person experience, moving through forests, and dungeons, enemies could just be around the next corner of the map for you to battle them.

You’re allowed free rein to look in any direction to choose which way to go next, adding depth and awe to the environments when you’re free to look around to plot your way through. It makes the art style come alive and enhancing it by making it look more 3D than it actually is.

There’s a tendency to do backtracking for previously missed goodies, in the same vein as Guacamelee and other games of the Metroidvania style. Unfortunately, the mechanics are limited so the puzzles aren’t all too difficult to solve.

When in combat Severed is reminiscent of games like Fruit Ninja where you swipe your finger/stylus across the screen and slash whatever is in your way. Although the creatures of this world definitely do not resemble apples and oranges, this I can assure you. I don’t remember any of the fruits in Fruit Ninja blocking my slashes or fighting back.

This mechanic makes the fight feel frantic and engaging like a Fruit Ninja stage, but provides you an opportunity to think how to best take down your enemy. You feel a similar satisfaction with your swipes due to the thoughtful sound design and integrated touch controls.

On the Wii U version, Severed is thankfully played on the tablet portion of the console, and the TV is used to keep track of the map. It’s pretty difficult to go from looking at the tablet then to the TV to get a good sense of what’s happening, so this solves all the problems when your actions and the visual cues you need are all in one place, rather breaking away from the tablet screen to look up at your TV.

In combat you’ll be faced with multiple enemies or single tough targets to deal with. Each enemy has a health meter and an attack gauge to keep well informed about your next move. You must choose wisely when facing down a tough opponent with his minions and focus on who to attack first. Fortunately, enemies have tells so you know when to strike, the game provides meters at the bottom that fill up with a yellow color indicating when they’re poised to strike back at you.

The yellow ring surrounds the enemy’s health gauge as well, this makes for an intuitive system for keeping track of the combat pace. And every enemy has a particular area of weakness to exploit, Severed will make demands of you to have precision aim on different enemy types.

As you slash at enemies you have your Severe Time gauge that fills on the top left, the more hits the enemy receives the sooner you can unleash your full power onto them. You then tap onto an enemy that’s stunned and it’ll open the way for your fury to be unleashed in a bullet time sequence where you can dismember your opponent’s limbs and claim items to use as currency for the game’s upgrade system.

You can upgrade your Severe Time,(the slow-mo state you initiate for the hack and slash fun to begin) your health, or damage. It brings it full circle, your arm was cut off, now you get to exact revenge on the mobs of enemies that stand in your way of being reunited with your family.

The only negatives are the handful of monster types, with those few monsters getting only upgraded in the late game. So moving forward the punches of the early game seem to bring less of the same power they packed, a shame but not a deal breaker in the slightest. It just makes me excited for what this indie developer, DrinkBox Studios, can bring out next. Severed shows the impact this game has on me to just want more dungeons and monsters to fight!

DrinkBox Studios has done a remarkable job of making this adventure memorable, through the striking imagery. The character design is genuinely interesting, haunting and beautiful. The combat is fun, frantic, and challenging when dealing with different enemy types all at once. DrinkBox Studios has made a game that the touch based interface is fun to use which by itself is astounding to someone who prefers a control or keyboard and mouse combo. Without touch I would say the mechanics would not be nearly as fun as they are. Hopefully in the future we’ll see more from DrinkBox Studios on the Nintendo Switch platform.

Severed was voted 2016’s iPad game of the year, and is currently available Nintendo eshop. If you buy the game on your linked Nintendo account, you’ll receive a copy on both Wii U and 3DS. You can also buy a copy on the PSVita or download it on iTunes.

This could potentially explain the NES Classic Mini cancellation even though the popularity of the tiny retro console hasn’t died down. Apparently, Nintendo was looking to clear the market out this Christmas for the SNES Classic Mini. As such, Nintendo never intended to keep the NES Classic Mini in stock past last years Christmas.

I’m pretty jazzed for the SNES Classic Mini, as I grew up loving the SNES games more than NES games. For many, it’s difficult not to look back fondly on some of the best console games ever created on the SNES such as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, and Chrono Trigger, to name just a few.

Can we really justify the price of the little console when we have the Virtual Console filled with SNES and NES classics? Although, for anyone who hasn’t bought a Nintendo console since the Wii this could be a great way to snag some nostalgic adults with a SNES Classic Mini who want to relive some of their childhood experiences without a high barrier to entry price.

It’s best to pre-order as soon as possible seeing that the NES Classic Mini sold out and became discontinued shortly after. Let’s hope the supplies don’t run dry too soon, but as we already know Nintendo has a bad track record with keeping up with demand.

Do you think Nintendo will give us more than 30 titles for the SNES Classic Mini? What games would you like to see pre-loaded on the tiny nostalgia box?

So with Nintendo Direct presentation over with we got a little more information about the up coming game Arms. Nintendo announced today that their motion-controlled fighting game will be releasing June 16th.

Finally, is what I had said after hearing the news, an original project for the Switch that isn’t 1-2 Switch. Although 1-2 Switch was a mediocre at best party game, you honestly need to have drunk adults milking cows and manipulating the joy-con’s in provocative ways to get any fun out of it since most of the games fall flat otherwise.

1-2 Switch the tech demo wrapped in a $50 price tag was not a system seller. I already had Zelda: Breath of the Wild to do that for me, which is by all accounts a marvelous product on the platform, but not original to the Switch.

You also have Snipperclips, now this one turned out to be a bit better than I had expected. The aim of the game was to solve some puzzles by cutting your paper characters into shapes. You or 4 of your friends will play some basketball, pop balloons, or transport office supplies. The game is cute as all hell, and only $20 but again it wasn’t something that would have sold me on the Switch.

Now Nintendo is finally releasing a game that could really hype the way people feel about the Switch, again aside from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is amazing but not exclusive to the Nintendo Switch.

Arms uses the Joy-cons, which are motion controllers, by using button combinations and movements of your hands to simulate a boxing match. PSA: You will not learn how to box by playing this game so don’t try it out on your next door bully.

Players tilt the controllers left or right to move in the direction of the nod. When pulling the controllers back toward yourself the character on-screen will move backwards. Using the buttons on the Joy-cons will allow you to unleash special attacks and ranged attacks, while to punch your opponent you have to thrust the Joy-con forward.

All the characters are interestingly designed, and as we learned today they’ll be full of customization options. All of the characters have different arm-related accessories. The newest character unveiled during the Nintendo Direct, Min Min, comes equipped with ramen noodles for arms!

Each character will come packed with their own stats, so you’ll want to think closely on who your main is going to be. Do you want an agile sprite of a character, or a massive hulking beast with gigantic mitts?

There’s a surprising depth to the frantic fighting. You’ll be throwing these spring-loaded punches throughout the map. Watching out for the next punch that’ll K.O. you in a flash. The game can be a cardio routine, akin to the Wii Sports boxing game.

The game rely heavily on the Joy-con controllers working in perfect sync with one another, and you as a player having an enjoyable experience using them. Like I mentioned before I believe Arms will be the true indicator of the longevity and viability of the Joy-con control scheme. We all know the waggle of the original Wii controllers become quite a nuisance after a while, but this game has so much cool flash and potential that I am hoping it’ll make players fall in love with the combat.

Time will tell if we’ll see an Arms 2 when this game lands in stores and Virtual Console on June 16th. It can easily be my next Splatoon, aside from Splatoon 2 which is also coming out July 21st. I’m excited for this new IP from Nintendo and for the Switch. Learn more about this game and where to buy it June 16 by visiting the official site.

What do you guys think of this new Nintendo IP? Are you going to pick it up? Do you think it’s got “Legs” to stand on? Leave a comment below.

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Nintendo just announced and displayed a trailer, which you can watch below, for the new Super Mario Odyssey which takes Mario on a global adventure. Will this be the invigorating vacation Mario needs? Probably not. But here’s hoping it’s a great game anyway. The Switch comes to us March 3rd, Super Mario Odyssey comes to us some time during the holidays later this year.

Niantic Labs is reportedly prepping for a huge Pokemon GO update this December. Since its phenomenal release, Pokemon Go’s user base has sharply declined. Users became disappointed with the app after features have been taken away and replaced with less interesting additions. This comes along with plenty of other inadequacies that the team over at Niantic are rushing to repair, and remedy with new, exciting additions.

No official announcements have been made, but along with the recent addition of Ditto, many are speculating that we’ll see more legendary Pokemon along with the inclusion of a large number of Johto region creatures.

It’s too soon to say if the upcoming update will excite users enough to return, but Niantic doesn’t seem to be concerned just yet. The game is still standing tall as the most successful mobile game of all-time with over $600 million in revenue.

Will you be returning to Pokemon Go for a chance to catch all your Johto favorites or are you out for good? Let us know!